The longtime personal secretary to former Newark Mayor Sharpe James testified at his corruption trial Tuesday that James' co-defendant, Tamika Riley, enjoyed extraordinary access to the mayor's office.

Rose Marie Posella, who worked for James throughout his five terms as leader of the state's largest city, said Riley showed up on the scene at City Hall in 1999. The relationship between the married mayor and Riley, a publicist and businesswoman, grew closer over time, she said.

"My impression was that Tamika Riley was a girlfriend of the mayor, based on my observations, his interest in her and how he reacted to her," Posella said.

Posella was one of two witnesses to take the stand Tuesday during the first day of testimony, as prosecutors sought to establish a close relationship between the co-defendants and how it allegedly motivated James to rig city land deals for Riley.

James, 72, and Riley, 38, face fraud and conspiracy charges in the trial before U.S. District Judge William Martini in federal court in Newark. Both have pleaded not guilty and have denied any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors say James arranged for Riley to purchase nine city-owned parcels between 2001 and 2005. After buying them for $46,000, she quickly resold them for $665,000, authorities said.

The defendants have not disputed they had an affair, but Riley's attorney, Gerald Krovatin, has said it was brief, lasting for just six months in 2002. Krovatin also said the affair began long after Riley had started purchasing the properties under a redevelopment program.

Posella's testimony contradicted that timeline.

She said she believed Riley and James were romantically linked as far back as March 2000, before Riley purchased any of the land at issue.

Riley began calling James three or four times a week and obtained his private office number, Posella said. Only a few trusted individuals, such as the mayor's wife, had access to that line, she said.

Posella also testified that she would interrupt James in meetings if Riley called because she was confident he would take her calls.

"His likes, his dislikes, that's something I came to know over 20 years," Posella said under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Germano.

During Posella's testimony, prosecutors showed jurors a letter Riley had written James in 2001, thanking him for being guest of honor at the opening of the new office of her public relations firm, TRI Inc., in a city-owned building.

"By the way, boss, you were just fabulous," the letter said.

At one point, a distraught Riley called City Hall asking for James' help with trouble she said she was having with her city lease for that office. Posella said James ordered a city official to look into the matter.

Posella said James stopped taking Riley's calls for about six months in 2003. Prosecutors have said they will show Riley's access to city property dried up during rough patches in her relationship with James. According to the indictment, Riley did not have any land deals with the city approved in 2003.

Posella's testimony continues today, when she may be cross-examined by defense attorneys.

Jennifer Brown/The Star-LedgerTamika Riley's former mentor and friend Diane Fuller-Coleman leaves the Martin Luther King Federal Courthouse after testifying in the trial of Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James.

Earlier Tuesday, an executive for a nonprofit agency who once planned to buy city property with Riley said Riley told her they could get the city land for free. The woman, Diane Fuller-Coleman, also described herself as a "mentor" to Riley.

Fuller-Coleman, president of Building an Empire, a social services agency in Jersey City, said she, Riley and a third woman, Beatrice Black, the agency's vice president for development, drafted a proposal in 2000 to buy the land and use it to launch services for low-income and needy residents.

"We were under the impression that it wasn't going to cost us anything to get these properties," Fuller-Coleman testified.

"And who gave you that impression?" Special U.S. Attorney Perry Primavera asked.

"Tamika," Fuller-Coleman replied.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Thomas Ashley, Fuller-Coleman acknowledged no one at City Hall ever "guaranteed" she would get the properties. She said Riley once showed her a letter from the mayor's office, addressed to "Tamika" and signed "Sharpe."

"It was personal," Fuller-Coleman said. "It made me feel that we had a definite commitment."

But she acknowledged she never saw any letters in which James or other officials promised to help Riley in land deals.

Fuller-Coleman said she had been friends with Riley's uncle, a Jersey City restaurant owner, when she met Riley nearly 20 years ago. Over time, she said, she became a mentor to the woman.

"Tamika's goal was to make a million," she said. "That was her goal ever since I met her."

By the late 1990s, Riley had launched TRI Inc. In March 1999, Fuller-Coleman said, Riley invited her to attend a celebrity-studded fashion show Riley was promoting in Atlanta during a national conference of black mayors.

"Tamika liked to be around the bigwiggies -- that's the way she was," Fuller-Coleman testified. "She loved the glamour. She always had a bigwiggie somewhere in her side pocket."

Riley called the gala "The Affair," and had invited two mayors as guests of honor, she said. One was James. Fuller-Coleman said Riley clearly knew the mayor.

"She went to the mayor and they hugged," she said. "The same way she treated me is how she treated the mayor."

Not long after returning to New Jersey, Fuller-Coleman said, she got a phone call from Riley asking if she wanted to get involved in the Newark land deals. But their relationship -- and the potential land transaction -- soured later that year, she said. She said she hasn't talked to Riley since.

Staff writers John P. Martin and Jeffery C. Mays contributed to this report.